Smart TV?
 

I went television shopping and all I got was confused. I want a LED flat screen and I know what size, but do I want a smart TV? One salesman indicated Id because there is so little on TV and a smart TV accesses Netflix easily. He may have a point.

Any thoughts?

I think you want a smart tv as it will give you many more options in the future, including being able to access Netflix easily. Our main tv is not smart, so we are not doing many of the things that my daughter and her friends are doing with their tv's. We usually don't miss what we don't have but, even so, out next major tv will be smart. Our tv's tend to last 20 years or so; a smart tv will not become obsolete as fast as a non-smart tv.

It depends on what you watch. If you only watch the major stations you don't need to spend that kind of money. We have a smart TV, but have never used it for that purpose. We don't use any of the online features. No Netflix, hoolu or any thing else. To me it was a waste of money.

I would go with the smart TV.

one thing to remember when using Netflix and such on the internet, you have to pay for the higher speed internet in order to avoid having to wait while your internet programs buffer. In Minnesota, I had 25Mbps and I still had buffering

is there a dumb t.v.? sigh. I still don't understand a "smart" phone.

My tv is not smart.
The guy who installed my internet also hooked up my tv with a cable. I get You Tube, Pandora and a screen that you type in what you want and it pulls it up from the internet. I typed in cats and got all kinds of cat videos.

I would go with the smart tv because of netflix, but also there are movies you can get online then show it on your tv.

I think smart TV it is. There really isn't much on TV without excessive violence these days and Nexflix will give me an option to see what I want to see while I'm quilting.

There is so much available out there if you have computer smarts. I'm lucky to have I.T. guys in my family, 3 of them. My husband bought a really really inexpensive computer from China the size of a deck of cards. That we plug into the TV. It receives the wifi signal from his computer and we can access just about anything. We generally don't watch mainstream TV as most of it is dumbed down anymore, but get all the BPS, BBC and Net flics to keep us happy this long long winter.
MaryKatherine

Buy the latest technology you can afford, even if you don't think you will use it right away. Otherwise, you have an obsolete TV before it even leaves the store!

We got a smart tv and an antenna because we were tired of paying for cable. It's just great! We get lots of local channels,and can watch Netflix, Amazon Prime, and anything that is online, such as Sewing With Nancy and Downton Abbey on PBS.

Yes. I use mine a lot to watch you tube sewing shows.

I have a smart TV and love it for watching Craftsy and YouTube on a large screen.

Maybe it's already out there but I'm waiting on the tv that you just flash the screen on a bare wall from a computer where you don't have to worry about special attachments on the wall.

we have a smart tv, no one ca the voice commands except the dogs! They turn it ion & off all the time. They can also change the volume!

My niece said many of her friends connect the internet cable going to a router with a splitter to the tv. Instant smart tv. I don't know all the details but teens can figure out all the ways. I use Roku and it works great on our regular tvs. No buffering at all unless it's HBO. That channel is finicky.

We have always gone with the biggest, big and most expensive..unforturnately. I will say that our 62" Samsung has lasted along time, as long as my husband can keep replacing the color wheel and bulb. We have replaced three bulbs (so the picture shows up on the screen) and two color wheels. They are small parts, but play a big role in getting the picture on the screen. We have had this TV for 26 years, beautiful picture....HD. Now we are considering getting the LED smart TV. My hubby came in yesterday and said,....since technology was changing on these televisions so fast with 3D (waiting on this one until you don't have to wear the glasses). etc. He thinks he has decided to get the best unsmart TV and use our Smart "boxes"....hoolu, Xbox etc for streaming Netflix. He said we can change out the plug in units with all of the features you want and your television doesn't have to stay up with the changing features. So we will see. He does have a point. we have all these other "things" we plug into our TV that do all the Smart things they have now put in the television. He said he wants a good solid television that will last, doubt he will get one to last 26 years. Samsung has been a good one.

We bought a smart tv about three weeks ago and love the ability to watch Netflix shows with no ads! It does a few other things that we have not yet explored as it is smarter than we are. Our daughter-in-law introduced us to it and we have watched very little regular tv except for the news since. Try it, you will like it!

We bought a smart TV last fall when we needed to replace our old TV. To be honest...we haven't used a single feature on it. But, we have it in case we ever do want to try something different with it. You might as well go ahead and get a smart TV...if you don't, someday you may wish you had.

smart tv, so glad I have one. so much more choices to watch.

I could have purchased the Roku box, but that wouldn't haven't given me a larger TV and it would have disappointed the person I promised my 32" one. The 32" will work well in my son's travel trailer as he lives in it on jobsites. I now have a 40" Samsung Smart TV in the play room waiting for him to come hang it up.

Thank you, everyone, for your input.

One of the things that can happen with an unsmart tv is that you can run out of plugs to connect everything together. It also can get much more complicated to get everything working together. If something happens to my dh, I will be in trouble in terms of troubleshooting our unit. Plus we have about 6 different remotes to keep track of!

well I'm lost just reading the question and replies, not a techie and out of the loop

I'm with you...still trying to figure out the DVR! (Not really, but have never even heard of smart TV's till this thread)

My birthday present to myself last year was a Smart-TV. My friends husband connected it but did not know how to make the connection for Netflix and other things. So when I find someone to do this I will then feel I have complete benefit of my purchase. It still is larger and shows a better picture then my bedroom one, so I am still pleased.

How much is a smart tv compared to a regular one? We've been pricing regular tvs and they are about $600 or so for the size we want. We looked at one smart tv at sears and it was $1800. :shock: We haven't looked at them anywhere else so far.

This thread got me to thinking. Dh and I went to Best Buy and ended up buying a new smart TV and a new (very smart) laptop to control it, plus a wireless keyboard. Here's how it's going to work. The TV will have an HDMI cord attached to it. When we want to stream from the computer, we will plug the laptop into this cord to connect it to the tv. The wireless keyboard will be kept next to the couch, and we will use that to control what we see on the tv. Basically we will be using the tv as a huge computer monitor to stream things such as Amazon prime movies (and anything else we sign up for). My understanding is that this eliminates the need for extra boxes such as Roku, etc. One caveat for this -- be sure the laptop has a separate graphics chip (which makes the streaming seamless).

There is a ***lot*** to know before you make a decision. We were very impressed with the quality of the people who helped us at Best Buy. My dh has worked 40+ years on mainframe computers and thought he knew enough, but even he admitted that he got a lot of additional information that helped make our decision easier.

The laptop/smart TV route is not the only way to go; it was just what we decided was the best for us.

I think that you can buy a regular tv and, as long as you have a wireless internet setup within your house (or an ethernet cable connection to the internet), you can buy add a Roku unit to stream internet to your tv. With Roku, for example, you can subscribe to Netflix and get Netflix movies streaming. Roku offers quite a few others channels too. This could be considerably less expensive than the route we went. Here is a link to Roku info:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/in...4203847AAbMFuo
There are media streamers other than Roku that are possibilities as well:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-th...rsus-apple-tv/

If you are near a Best Buy, I think it is well worth carving out a couple of hours of time to go there and start asking questions. Have a good idea of your budget and what you want to watch. (For example, some of the stuff we get for free on Amazon Prime is much more attractive to us than Netflix offerings.) Just be prepared to spend at least twice the amount of time you think you will need, and plan more than one trip if necessary. We didn't learn all there is to know about smart TVs, but did learn enough to know what we wanted to get.

Price?? $468 for a 40" Samsung smart TV. I could have bought a 40" non smart TV for $80-$100 less. I only wanted a Samsung, LG or Sony. There were some less expensive ones, but I like these three brands in electronics. Mine is still in the box because my son hasn't been home put it up.

Price depends a lot on size too. I agree with irishrose to stick with Samsung, LG or Sony. We ended up with the Sony because the picture seemed so much better. (With our aging eyes, I try to get things that are super easy to look at.) It was pricey, though. We probably wouldn't have chosen that one had it not been on sale at end-of-season for quite a bit off. It was about 50% more than what we thought we would be paying, and that was on sale. One of the younger, just-married salesman in the laptop area said he ended up buying a Vizio (much less $$$) and that he and his wife are very happy with it. A lot depends on what you are looking for in terms of size and picture quality.

I asked about sound, as our ears are going the way of our eyes. Was told none of the tv's have great sound on their own because of the small speakers located in the back of the tv. However, what we plan to do is buy a "sound bar", which is a long narrow speaker that you can place at the base of the tv (our tv will stand on its legs rather than be mounted legless on the wall) and hook into the tv so you get better sound facing you.

We'll probably look for a sony or LG. After the problems we had getting a part that was missing from our new Samsung range, dh said no more samsung. It was ridiculous and took months and a lot of phone calls, emails and online chats for this one missing part.

I thought with a smart tv you didn't need a laptop. I can hook a computer up to my dumb tv-it has an HDMI port on it. I thought the whole draw of a smart tv is that it's like a computer and tv in one.

That's true. However, a smart tv is not quite as smart as a laptop. We are subscribed to a series of business lectures from a private company, and these are not offered via any "channel" such as Netflix, Amazon, or ....... We really want to be able to watch these lectures on the tv in the living room instead of being chained to our computer desks. That's why we ended up going the laptop route. It also makes tasks such as creating a spreadsheet possible. Basically we can use this big tv screen as a computer monitor for any computerized task we want to do.

When we went in initially, dh was thinking in terms of a smart tv with its own built-in web browser. However, those types of built-in tv browsers have idiosyncrasies. "Smartness" varies from tv to tv. Not everyone wants full computer adaptability like we do, but we figured it gives us the most features and makes us a little more obsolete-proof for future applications.

We also like being able to use a *keyboard* to stream information to the tv. The built-in web browsers for smart tv's typically have you using a remote to scroll through information to get where you want to go. Our blu-ray DVD player has apps for Netflix, etc. but it is a real pain to scroll through to find what we want; a keyboard is faster.

By plugging in the laptop, we really didn't need to get a smart tv. You're right; you can do the same thing with a dumb tv as long as it has an HDMI outlet. My dh happened to be in the room, so I asked him why we didn't get a dumb tv. He said that only the lower quality tvs sold now are dumb. All of the better quality tvs (ones with better picture) automatically come with some level of "smart"; they also now all come "3D ready". These features are just automatically built-in whether you use them or not.

Picture quality may not matter as much to many people. Our tv's tend to last at least 20 years and we are both past retirement age. I wanted to get the very best picture possible since we will likely be using the tv for several hours every day for the next 20 years.

There are so many variables. For example, it's fine to get a dumb tv and plug in a laptop to it as we are doing. However, you need to be sure the laptop has a graphics chip. If graphics are run through the CPU, you will get buffering problems and the whole process will be slowed down. (This is true whether the tv is smart or not.)